AI chatbots fail to improve medical advice for patients, Oxford study reveals
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AI chatbots don't improve medical advice, study finds
And people make bad information worse by failing to provide chatbots with the right details Healthcare researchers have found that AI chatbots could put patients at risk by giving shoddy medical advice. Academics from the Oxford Internet Institute and the Nuffield Department of Primary Care
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AI no Better Than Other Methods for Patients Seeking Medical Advice, study Shows
LONDON, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Asking AI about medical symptoms does not help patients make better decisions about their health than other methods, such as a standard internet search, according to a new study published in Nature Medicine. The authors said the study was important as people were
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Medical misinformation more likely to fool AI if source appears legitimate, study shows
Feb 9 (Reuters) - Artificial intelligence tools are more likely to provide incorrect medical advice when the misinformation comes from what the software considers to be an authoritative source, a new study found. In tests of 20 open-source and proprietary large language models, the software was
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AI chatbots give inaccurate medical advice says Oxford Uni study
AI chatbots give inaccurate and inconsistent medical advice that could present risks to users, according to a study from the University of Oxford. The research found people using AI for healthcare advice were given a mix of good and bad responses, making it hard to identify what advice they should
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AI no better than other methods for patients seeking medical advice, study shows
LONDON, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Asking AI about medical symptoms does not help patients make better decisions about their health than other methods, such as a standard internet search, according to a new study published in Nature Medicine. The authors said the study was important as people were
[6]
Chatbots Make Terrible Doctors, New Study Finds
Chatbots provided incorrect, conflicting medical advice, researchers found: "Despite all the hype, AI just isn't ready to take on the role of the physician." Chatbots may be able to pass medical exams, but that doesn't mean they make good doctors, according to a new, large-scale study of how
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AI Chatbots Giving 'Dangerous' Medical Advice, Oxford Study Warns - Decrypt
Researchers found that LLMs were no better than traditional methods for making medical decisions. AI chatbots are fighting to become the next big thing in healthcare, acing standarized tests and offering advice to your medical woes. But a new study published in Nature Medicine has shown that they
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AI Chatbots Are Even Worse at Giving Medical Advice Than We Thought
Beth Skwarecki is Lifehacker's Senior Health Editor, and holds certifications as a personal trainer and weightlifting coach. She has been writing about health for over 10 years. It's tempting to think that an LLM chatbot can answer any question you pose it, including those about your health. After
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Can AI spot a medical lie if presented as a fact? Study finds
Large language models accept fake medical claims if presented as realistic in medical notes and social media discussions, a study has found. Many discussions about health happen online: from looking up specific symptoms and checking which remedy is better, to sharing experiences and finding
[10]
AI chatbots give bad health advice, research finds
Paris (France) (AFP) - Next time you're considering consulting Dr ChatGPT, perhaps think again. Despite now being able to ace most medical licensing exams, artificial intelligence chatbots do not give humans better health advice than they can find using more traditional methods, according to a
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Health advice from AI chatbots is frequently wrong, study shows
Study found AI health chatbots performed no better than Google in guiding diagnoses or next steps, often giving inconsistent or false advice. Researchers concluded current models are not ready for direct patient care despite rapid improvements. A new study published Monday provided a sobering look
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Doctors have question as more AI-powered apps claim to offer medical guidance
Artificial intelligence is shaking up industries from software and law to entertainment and education. And as physicians like Dr. Cem Aksoy are learning, it's posing special challenges in medicine as patients tap the technology for advice. Aksoy, a medical resident at a hospital in Ankara, Turkey,
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AI-powered apps and bots are barging into medicine. Doctors have questions.
Artificial intelligence is entering healthcare, offering advice to patients. However, AI apps are sometimes providing incorrect medical information. Doctors express concerns about AI's accuracy and potential to cause harm. Regulatory bodies allow AI for patient education but not diagnoses. Some
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AI chatbots give bad health advice, research finds - The Korea Times
PARIS -- Next time you're considering consulting Dr. ChatGPT, perhaps think again. Despite now being able to ace most medical licensing exams, artificial intelligence chatbots do not give humans better health advice than they can find using more traditional methods, according to a study published
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A University of Oxford study published in Nature Medicine found that AI chatbots offer no advantage over internet searches when patients seek medical advice. Despite large language models achieving 94.9% accuracy in controlled tests, real-world human-AI interaction in healthcare revealed a troubling gap between AI potential and performance, with patients struggling to provide complete information and receiving inconsistent advice.
AI Chatbots Perform No Better Than Traditional Methods for Patients Seeking Medical Advice
A comprehensive study from the University of Oxford has revealed that AI medical advice provides no measurable benefit to patients compared to traditional methods like internet searches. Published in Nature Medicine
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, the research examined how 1,298 UK participants assessed health conditions across ten medical scenarios ranging from common colds to life-threatening brain hemorrhages. Researchers from the Oxford Internet Institute and Nuffield Department of Primary Care Health Sciences partnered with MLCommons to evaluate whether large language models including GPT-4o, Llama 3, and Command R+ could help people make better health decisions1
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Source: 404 Media
The findings challenge the growing trend of relying on AI chatbots for health guidance. Mental Health UK polling from November 2025 found that more than one in three UK residents now use AI to support their mental health or wellbeing
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. Yet this study suggests such reliance may be misplaced, with participants using AI vs internet search showing no improvement in identifying relevant conditions or recommending appropriate courses of action.The Troubling Gap Between AI Potential and Performance
When tested without human participants, the three large language models demonstrated impressive capabilities, identifying conditions correctly in 94.9% of cases and selecting the appropriate course of action in 56.3% of cases
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. However, when real people interacted with these systems, performance collapsed dramatically. Relevant conditions were identified in less than 34.5% of cases, and the correct course of action was given in less than 44.2% of interactions—no better than the control group using traditional resources5
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Source: Euronews
Adam Mahdi, associate professor at Oxford and co-author of the paper, described this as a "huge gap" between the potential of AI and the pitfalls when used by people. "The knowledge may be in those bots; however, this knowledge doesn't always translate when interacting with humans," he explained
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. The human-AI interaction in healthcare proved far more complex than benchmark testing suggested, revealing limitations that controlled experiments failed to capture.Incomplete Information and Misleading Responses Create Dangerous Scenarios
The study identified two critical problems: humans providing incomplete information and AI chatbots generating misleading responses. When researchers analyzed around 30 interactions in detail, they found patients often failed to share complete symptom details, leaving out crucial information
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. "People share information gradually. They leave things out, they don't mention everything," Mahdi told the BBC4
.Even more concerning, the systems delivered inaccurate medical advice that could endanger lives. In one documented case, two users described nearly identical symptoms of a subarachnoid hemorrhage—a life-threatening condition causing bleeding on the brain. One patient mentioning the "worst headache ever" was correctly advised to seek emergency care, while another describing a "terrible" headache was told to lie down in a darkened room
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. The models also provided geographically confused guidance, recommending partial US phone numbers alongside "Triple Zero," the Australian emergency number1
.AI and Medical Misinformation Spread Through Authoritative-Sounding Sources
A separate study published in The Lancet Digital Health adds another layer of concern about AI and medical misinformation. Researchers at Mount Sinai tested 20 large language models and found they were more likely to propagate incorrect medical advice when misinformation came from authoritative-sounding sources
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. When false information appeared in realistic hospital discharge notes, AI tools believed and passed it along 47% of the time, compared to just 9% for misinformation from social media platforms like Reddit3
."Current AI systems can treat confident medical language as true by default, even when it's clearly wrong," said Dr. Eyal Klang of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai
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. User prompts also affected accuracy, with authoritative-sounding questions increasing the likelihood that AI would agree with false information. Overall, the AI models believed fabricated information from roughly 32% of content sources, though OpenAI's GPT models proved least susceptible while other models accepted up to 63.6% of false claims3
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Benchmark Testing Fails to Reflect Real-World Medical Decision-Making
The Oxford research highlights a fundamental problem with how AI systems are evaluated for healthcare applications. Models trained on medical textbooks and clinical notes may excel at structured medical licensing exams, but this performance doesn't translate to real-world medical decision-making
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. "Training AI models on medical textbooks and clinical notes can improve their performance on medical exams, but this is very different from practicing medicine," explained Luc Rocher, associate professor at the Oxford Internet Institute1
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Source: France 24
Doctors spend years developing triage skills using rule-based protocols designed to minimize errors—experience that AI systems lack despite their vast knowledge bases. Lead author Andrew Bean noted that the analysis illustrated how human-AI interaction poses challenges "even for top" AI models
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. Dr. Rebecca Payne, lead medical practitioner on the study, warned it could be "dangerous" for people to ask chatbots about their symptoms4
.Healthcare Safeguards Needed Before AI Deployment
The researchers concluded that AI chatbots aren't ready for real-world use in helping patients assess health conditions. "Despite strong performance on medical benchmarks, providing people with current generations of LLMs does not appear to improve their understanding of medical information," the study states
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. Rocher warned that as more people rely on chatbots for medical advice, "we risk flooding already strained hospitals with incorrect but plausible diagnoses"1
.Dr. Girish Nadkarni, chief AI officer of Mount Sinai Health System, emphasized the need for built-in healthcare safeguards: "AI has the potential to be a real help for clinicians and patients, offering faster insights and support. But it needs built-in safeguards that check medical claims before they are presented as fact"
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. Dr. Bertalan Meskó, editor of The Medical Futurist, noted that OpenAI and Anthropic recently released health-dedicated versions of their chatbots, which may yield different results, but stressed the need for "clear national regulations, regulatory guardrails and medical guidelines"4
.The Oxford team plans similar studies across different countries, languages, and time periods to assess whether these factors impact AI for assessing health conditions
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. For now, the message is clear: AI medical advice requires substantial improvements before it can safely assist the public with healthcare decisions.References
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